I hate presenting
things before they are finished, but the nitrocellulose lacquer I use
takes time to cure (the
longer the
better) so there was no point in rushing the project considering
the guitars were just going to sit in my house three months while I'm
in England. I sprayed a few last coats of clear on them and I'm going
to let the dry all summer. When I come back in Sept. I'll do the wet
sanding, final polish, and install the electronics.
I really didn't have any intention
of doing a web page, so I didn't even think about picking up a camera
until I was already a few weeks into the process. I'll be much more
diligent
in my future projects. While researching for
this project I found so many helpful web sites, some from
pro manufacturers,
some from weekend hobbyists. All were very helpful and very much appreciated.
I put together this web site in hopes that I might be able to help anyone
else who might be thinking about trying to build their own guitar. I'll
do my best to present as much information as I can, both my successes
and my mistakes.
Getting started......
Ash body back cut out and routed,
and various neck sections, templates and a rough cut body back.
When stuck on a plane I used a program
called Flash to draw up a body template. I wanted a guitar that was original,
cool, sleek, classy, etc; different but not weird. One reason for the long
upper horn is that one of the most important factors for me, when choosing
a
guitar
is
how
it
balances. I won't even consider playing a guitar that is neck heavy. When
I printed the design out, it was on four sheets of paper which I taped
together and
then
cut
out.
Because
I was using my own original body design, I didn't work too terribly hard
to stick to the template exactly. My main concern in this
project was to try and balance the fact that I wanted to make nice guitars,
but
since
these were my first, and there was a strong possibility that I could
really screw something up and totally ruin a guitar, I didn't want to
spend too much on the wood. I'm
fortunate in the fact that Oklahoma City has a couple of wood crafting
stores,
so I can get a lot of my supplies locally. After doing some research
I figured out that Home Depot's Ryobi line of tools offers the most bang
for the buck, I bought a hand-held router, a table top router, a band
saw, a table saw, a sanding station, a drill press, and their multi-pack
of hand tools that included a circular saw and a drill and an orbital
palm sander. I also bought a bunch of small items which are a must. T-squares,
calipers, a depth gauge, blue tape, masking tape, double-sided tape,
pencils, a laser straight edge, etc.
Lastly but most important,
Safety
glasses, safety goggles, a quality respirator mask, and earplugs. NEVER start any project without these last four items. FYI, I bought
safety
glasses and goggles because although I like to wear the
goggles whenever possible, sometimes my respirator makes my goggles
fog up, so in those instances I'll wear the glasses. When I use the
router, I have to wear the goggles because the router makes tons
or airborne wood chip confetti, and glasses alone won't keep it
out or your eyes. You never want to flinch when you're using a router.
Also, I strongly suggest getting a good shop vac, preferably one
that attaches to you tools. I got a Rigid brand that just plugs into
the
back of most of my tools, so it sucks up most of the dust while I'm
working. I'm a bit of a neat freak, so after every task, I vacuum
pretty thoroughly.
I had never used a router or a band
saw before, so with the first guitar (the purple one) there was a lot
of learning involved. I usually cut quite a ways outside the lines hoping
that if I made a mistake there would be enough extra wood to correct
any problem. This was especially true on my neck pieces.
Neck sections, this is my fourth
neck, Birdseye Maple and Purpleheart.
I'm not sure why, but I decided to
make my neck out of laminated sections of different wood. I did quite
a bit of experimentation with types of wood and the thickness of the
neck sections. Part of the learning process here was to figure out which
tool was best for cutting or "ripping" wood into thinner pieces.
I tried it with the band saw, but because my band saw is small and relatively
cheap,
it wasn't
up to the job. I ended up doing them on the table saw and then doing
a lot of sanding on the belt sander to get the sections even. To get
the fingerboard surface nice and flat, I go back and forth between a
hand plane, a table top belt sander, and a sanding belt glued to a piece
of
wood that I know to be flat. You have to be careful using the belt sander.
Although it's a flat surface, it's still easy to over sand in a certain
area, particularly the center of the neck.
On my first necks (I made one extra,
the one with the stripe of walnut in the center) I just used Hard Maple,
but once I was confident in my ability, I used
Curly Maple and Birdseye Maple for a better look.
Neck sections clamped, then rough
sawn, then planed and sanded. Although not pictured, two small "wings" will
be glued onto the headstock and then shaped to headstock design.
Neck layers.
In the attempt to balance cost vs.
quality I found a board of Ash at a local store that was 14 inches wide.
It had a few worm holes in it, but it was a decent piece of wood at a
very good price, so I decided to use that for the backs of the guitar
body. I wanted the guitar body to be about 1-3/4 inches thick, and I
wanted the maple top to be about 5/8 inches thick, so I had my ash board
planed to a little over 1-3/16 inches thick. That gave me a little extra
to work with. This was the first wood I bought, and so in my excitement
over my new tools
and
getting
the
project
started,
I
went
home and used
my
template
to cut out all four of the body backs. This was of course a mistake.
As soon as I started working on the first guitar I realized I wanted
to make subtle changes in the body design, but I couldn't because I had
already cut out the backs. Doh! On my next guitars the upper neck horn
will be thicker or "meatier" and both neck horns will curve
in more towards the neck.
First draft of new body style on left. Second
draft showing possible F-hole, control cavity and knobs, bridge, etc. on
right. Also shows how deep neck goes into the body under guitar top..
If you've ever priced quality maple
for a guitar top, you'll know it can be pretty pricey. I've looked at
wood that was as much as $250.00!!! That's way to much to spend on a
first time project that could end in disaster. I found a company on Ebay
that sells decent tops for a much more reasonable price of $40-50. The
only down side to their tops was that they came in 1/4 inch thickness
instead of 5/8. This meant my tops wouldn't be as carved as I wanted.
I was going to use the faux binding effect on the side of the top, so
I just decided to sacrifice a little of the binding thickness.
One of the three tops I purchased off Ebay.
Once the top pieces were glued together
I rough cut it to the body shape. Then using the table router and a flush
cutting bit, I cut it to match the body. Because it's an original body
design, at this stage it still a rough cut of both top and bottom. I
then use two-sided tape to attach the top to the bottom and use the table
top sander to get both pieces into their final shape.
Tops and bodies rough cut. Guitar #4 has
a non-Ebay3/4 inch top made out of Birdseye Maple and a few laminate strips.
I'm still working on my router technique,
but every once in a while I have and accident. Luckily because it's my
own body style changes can be made to work around most accidents or mistakes.
When working on my fourth guitar, using a piece of 3/4 inch Birdseye
Maple for the top, everything was going fine during the flush cut routing
and
then the router sent a chunk of the top flying across the room. Thanks
to the fact that my body shape has a big butt end, and I usually cut
outside the lines leaving extra wood, I was able to smooth this out,
even up the other side and keep going.
Chunk missing, then sanded out.
I was worried about the process of
carving the top of the guitar, but it's not as difficult as I thought.
I did my first top (purple guitar) on my table top belt sander. I have
a heavy grit belt on the sander, so I had to be very careful. I
then cut out the F-hole, and with the top taped to the back, routed out
the neck pickup
slot. My neck pickup hole evolved a bit throughout the project, from
now on I think I'm going to wait until the guitar is glued together
before I route the hole. I used the table top router to rough cut the
F-hole.
Then I used hand sanding and a Dremmel tool to tighten it up. I'm not
100% happy with the F-hole. I really took my time with the size and
placement, but once the guitar got all put together, I think the F-hole
was a bit
too big, and not quite aligned the way it should have been. Although
there's no picture, I then routed out the area of the body back under
the F-hole. I routed it by hand and kept the lines as clean as possible.
I didn't stress too much about it, because once the top was on, you'd
have to really take a close look inside to see the routed area. If
I were ever to make a guitar for someone else, I'd make a template and
make the rout perfect.
Top#1, carved and routed. I tried
to keep the part next to the neck pocket intact, but the router chipped
it off. The mounting ring covers it though. With all future guitars I'll
cut this out and just extend the neck into this area.
The one thing I can't take credit
for is cutting the slots for the frets. I thought about doing it myself
but I would have paid $25 for a blank piece of Ebony, $31 for the same
piece with the frets slot pre-cut. To me, that's a no-brainer. For just
$6 dollars difference, it saves me having to buy and more tools, saves
me time, and it's one less very important think to worry about. I use
a Stew-Mac Jaws fret press to press in the wire. I really love it, but
it's not made to do the higher frets. I don't have a picture of it, but
I built and wooden adapter that fits in the curved bottom so I can go
all the way up the neck. I use Dunlop 6100 fret wire; the biggests they
make. All my other guitars have
scalloped
fingerboards,
but I don't think I'm going to do that to these. I'm seriously considering
on my next guitars to use the big Dunlop fret wire from frets 1-14, and
then use a slightly smaller and much thinner fret wire from frets 15-24
to allow a bit more space for my fat fingers up high. My fretboards came
with a radius of 12, and then from frets 15 on up, I sanded it to a 16
radius. I've done many fret jobs where I haven't used glue in the fret
slot, but with all three of these guitars I used a hospital needle to
inject Titebond into the slots before pressing the fret in.
Jaws fret press.
I didn't photograph too much of the
neck making process, but before the neck was cut or shaped in any way
I routed the channel for the truss rod. Once that was routed I cut out
the neck and began to shape it up. Then it was time to glue the fingerboard
on. Before gluing the fingerboard on I rough cut it with the band saw.
Once it's glued on it's pretty easy to shape it up with the table router
and a flush cut bit.
I'm not sure what if anything I'm
going to do about inlays or dot markers. I've always liked the look of
a blank neck, so for now I'll probably leave the necks blank. I can easily
put in dot markers later. I thought about trying to do some inlay work,
but I dedcided against for many reasons. It would add cost to the project
for tools and supplies. I thought I might me trying to take on too much
all at once. Lastly, I have a condition called "Benign Familial Tremors" where
my hands shake, my left much worse than my right. Even if I wanted to,
I'm not sure I could physically do inlay work. My condition makes soldering
a really chore as well. I have to be extra careful when using my left
hand to guide things into the band saw.
Neck with truss rod channel cut, and a neck
waiting for frets. Neck with fingerboard being glued on.
I also experimented a bit with the
Volute. I played guitar for 20 years before I knew it was called a "volute",
I just thought it was that lump that some guitars had behind the headstock.
I did a lot of reading about this and everyone has a different opinion
about it's importance. I figure it's out of the way, and it certainly
won't hurt the strength of the headstock, so why not? On the green guitar
a made a big lump which I had thought about trying to shape into something
cool. I've seen one builder who carves a little Greco into his. Driskill
guitars also have a very cool volute. For now it's just a lump. Since
the red guitar doesn't need tuners because of
the
Floyd
Rose
Speedloader,
there
was
no reason
for
a volute
because there's no tension on the headstock.
A normal volute, the lump, and none. The
Floyd Rose neck and headstock on the right still needs shaping.
Then it was time to glue the neck
into the body and then glue the top on. I laid the neck on the body
and traced around it. I then used boards taped to the top along the tracing
as a template for routing. When taping
the
board
along
the tracing
I
tried
to be as accurate as possible, but I made sure that if there was any
mistake, I would have left too much wood. You can always take more off
later, you can never put it back. There was some math involved at this
point. With the Tele guitar the neck went
in at
a straight
angle,
but guitar #2 (green guitar) had a Tune-o-matic bridge on it, so I had
to figure the correct angle
to cut off the bottom of the neck joint so that
the
neck
angled towards the top of the bridge. I really, really, took my time
with this. Although I tried to be as accurate as possible, I made sure
that if I did make an error, the error would be to cut not enough of
an angle. If there was too much of an angle I'd be screwed, but if there
was not enough, I could always route out a bit of the top for the bridge
to sit down in to. Take a look at Warrior guitars to get an idea of what
I'm talking about. Thry cut a pit underneath their Tune-o-matic bridges
for a lower profile.
I found this diagram on the internet
to use as a basis for my calculations.
Blue line is the amount I want above the
guitar top.
Brown line is the thickness of the top.
Green line is the depth of the neck pocket.
Yellow line is where the neck meets the body.
Red line is the amount to be cut off for
the proper angle. If I remember right, that ended up be about 4 degrees.
I route out leaving at least 3/8 of an inch
of the body.
Neck in pocket, then measured,
then cut, sanded and glued in. In the picture on the right I'm also gluing
an ebony laminate onto the headstock while I'm gluing the neck in.
I had some spare Telecaster parts
laying around so I decided my first guitar would be a Twanger.
I originally wanted to go for a Sunburst
type dye job, but I wasn't happy with the way it turned out.
You can't tell from the picture,
but the yellow ended up looking greenish. the whole guitar looked like
something that something that should be a Thanksgiving Day centerpiece.
I then sanded it all off to start
over. I didn't take any pictures, but I tried the Purple with a white
body and neck. It looked kinda cool, like something Prince would have
played in the 80's but it still wasn't right, so I went back to black.
Guitars in various stages.
The red and purple gutiar are 25-1/2 inch
scale, the green guitar is 25 inch scale.
I have to apologize for my train
of thought jumping all over the place. I'm just adding stuff to this
as I think about it.
I experimented with many types of
glue. I think my favorite was Titebond III. I also used Gorilla glue
on a few things.
It's great glue, but it's very messy and you have wear gloves or it
will dye your hands black. The good thing about Gorrila glue is that
it expands
to 3 or 4 times it's size, so it really fills gaps. Although my neck
joints all ended up pretty tight, I used Gorilla glue to make sure
every crack was filled. One of the reasons I think I'm going to start
routing
all my cavities after everything is glued together, is because I haven't
figured out how to keep glue from seeping into the cavities. I usually
use blue tape all as much as possible when gluing to make clean up
easier. I try to wipe it down during the gluing process, but with so
many clamps
it's hard to clean up around them.
Tops being glued on. On the left I'm using
Titebond III with no blue tape to aid in cleanup, on the right I think
it's Gorilla glue, notice the blue tape all around the body.
With guitar top #2 (green guitar)
and #3 (red guitar) I used basically the same top carving technique but
I had become more comfortable with
my
hand router
so I used it to take a few small layers off to save some time. I had to be
VERY careful here. It was all freehand routing and one slip could have
completely ruined a top. If I ever paid $250 for a Quilt Maple top, I don't
think I'd try this technique, I think I'd just do it all with sanding to
be safe.
Top #2 before sanding/carving.
Because top #1 had went so well, I got a bit too much "in the zone" doing
top #2 and made a bit of a mistake on the belt sander. I carved too
much out of the upper cut, so when I went to rout the neck pickup cavity, I
realized
that it stuck out over the carved part. I made up for this by making a wood
pickup ring that went under the chrome ring and contoured as best I
could to the carved part. This actually worked out well because this
is the guitar with the tune-o-matic bridge and the higher neck angle,
so the pickup ring needed to be lifted up a bit. Although it doesn't
look bad, I also feel got a bit too aggressive with the carving on
the horns and they don't have as much of a profile and aren't as striking
as
guitar
# 1.
I was really happy with the top until
I realized my mistake.
Problem solved.
Once it was carved it was time to
drill the holes for the bridge and the string ferrules. I went with the
Tune-o-matic and then the strings through the body for a couple of reasons.
I really
like
the
way
it looks,
and in the never ending struggle to save money, it's the cheapest option.
I measured everything over and over again and used a laser sight and
thought I had the top glued on perfectly straight. Then when drilling
the holes I used the top centerline as a reference. Once the guitar was
strung up I realized that the centerline was just a wee bit off, so the
string-through-body holes were a bit off. It's hard to tell, but I can
see it. Also, I wish I would have spaced the string holes out a bit more.
I think it would have looked better, and it would have given me a bit
more space for the larger ferrules on the back of the guitar. Lastly,
the high E string hole ended up being 1/32-ish too far from it's neighboring
hole. When I get home I might have a curved piece of chromed metal made
as a tailpiece for the holes to go through, like on a Flying V. I'd then
fill the holes and space them out a bit more and center them. I'd have
an identical piece made for the back of the gutiar as well. I just have
no idea how much it would cost to have two pieces of metal fabricated
and chromed. I should just leave it alone, lesson learned and not make
the same mistake again. For future, guitars of this type, I'm making a
drilling template.
I used basically the same technique
with top #3 (red guitar) but I waited until it was glued together until
I started shaping. By this time I had purchased a palm sander so I though
that would be helpful. I also made my first routing pass around the body
with a rounded bit to give it a bit more shape. I wanted a bit of a different
overall look, especially up in the neck horns.
With each guitar, once it was glued
together, I did a preliminary "stringing" to see how it sounded
acoustically and to see if there were any problems. I was very happy
with all three guitars. They all had a good lively acoustic tone. I actually
spent a few days playing the green guitar. I've played 25-1/2 inch scale
guitars for as long as I can remember, so although it's just a small
difference,
it's 25 inch scale felt strange. I've got fairly small hands so I think
I'll really like it. Guitar #4 (Birdseye maple still under construction)
will be 25 inch scale.
While
routing the neck pickup cavity in the red guitar, somehow, the router
cut into
the guitar and the template. I really have no idea what happened. I
had to make a whole new template. After that, I decided to spend
a day re-making all of my templates so that they are twice as thick,
and
I made duplicates of every template I use. Luckily, once the pickup
mounting ring is on, you can't see the mistake. I did contemplate going
ahead
and routing it for a P-90 or another humbucking pickup.
Guitar number #3 (red guitar) strung up
with it's Floyd Rose Speedloader. I wet the top with water in this pic
to bring out the grain a bit.
Once I strung up guitar #3 I had
a problem. I thought I had cut off my neck bottom straight so that the
neck would go in at no angle, but once I got the Floyd Rose bridge on,
I realized that there was a bit of an angle and I left just a bit too
much area of the neck above the top of the guitar. (See the blue line
in the earlier diagram photo) This bridge is supposed to be flush against
the body, but because of the neck
angle
it now has
to be raised up quite a bit. Since I'm making this guitar for myself,
this might end up being a good thing. I've never used Floyd Rose vibratos
because I rest my hand on the bridge and I hate to feel the fine tuners
under the palm of my hand. I'm just going tilt the Floyd back at a fairly
drastic angle and that will get the fine tuners out of my way and get
the back of the Floyd back down into the body cavity. Since the vibrato
posts are now up pretty high I'm going to get a piece of Ebony or maybe
even a chunk of brass the put in the post cavity area to really anchor
the posts. Before I came up the idea of tilting the bridge back at an
angle, I contemplated removing the fingerboard and replaning the neck,
but that would have been a major pain, and having never done it before
I could have really screwed things up. I'm the kind of person who is
never happy with a mistake, so it's still very possible that I could
be doing that anyway.
FYI...I really like the Floyd Rose
speedloader. It takes forever to get set up correctly, but once it is,
you can change a whole set of strings in under a minute. It came in very
handy while doing fret work.
Floyd flat, before I came up with the idea
of angling it back into the body.
Changing the subject......
If you look at the guitar #1 pic
while it's sunburst, you see that the knobs holes were a circular cavity.
You can't really see it too well
in this picture, but they looked awful. I tried making them using a round
head router bit in the drill press and it didn't work. The drill press
doesn't spin fast enough and the bit ended up taking small chunks out
of the top. I tried sanding them out but that ended up making the holes
lop-sided and out of line. I thought that maybe once I had the dye on
it wouldn't be as noticeable but it still bugged me. I ended up getting
using a couple of forstner drill bits and re-drilling the indentations
with a flat bottom. I filled the Rhythm/Treble switch hole with a dowel
rod to be re-drilled later. I'm going to get a big chrome washer to put
under the Rhythm/Treble switch that will end up making it flush with
the top.
Maybe it was because this was my
first guitar, but it fought me every step of the way. I grabbed a Fender "UFO" knob
to use as a reference when drill the new holes. I wanted it to fit just
like this.
As in the 2nd picture, I want the knob to
be flush with top.
This all went beautiful until later
when I realized that the Fender knob I grabbed somehow was 1/32" smaller
than any of the other same type Fender knobs I had. I wanted to put chrome
knobs on this guitar, so now I have to search far and wide for chrome
knobs of the slightly smaller size, if they even exist. It's such a small
difference I can't trust a mail order or over-the-phone salesperson,
I have to actually have the knobs in hand to sort it out. If I can't
find Chrome "UFO" knobs to fit, I'll just have to use regular knobs and
have a bit of the hole around the knob. I decided to go with the flat
indentations until I can figure out a way to drill the "crater" type
indentations. I guess I could use my plunge router, but that seems a
bit haphazard to me. I have a hard enough time lining up the hole on
a drill press. Maybe I should change my design so that my holes are grouped
instead of having to be perfectly in line. That would solve a few problems
in the long run. Maybe it's because my drill press is to small to be
dealing with a guitar body, but I have a really hard time drilling three
holes perfectly in line and then drilling the three forstner bit recessed
indentations in line as well.
I haven't done the final sanding
on the edges of the red Floyd Rose guitar's headstock. After making the
guitar top, I had enough wood left over that I was able to put a matching
piece
on
the headstock. Using my table router I cut it down to about 1/8" thick
and glued it to the heastock. I cut the truss rod cover piece out of
it before gluing it on.
Thin stock being glued to the headstock
Truss rod cover cut out of thin stock before
gluing. .
I'm still not sure what I'm going
to do for a logo on these guitars. I had come up with a logo for a previous
refinishing project, but I think even if I reduce it down, it's too big
to fit on these smaller headstocks.
"TC" logo.
After getting the first guitar (purple)
to a point where I could string it up before starting the finish, I spent
a lot of time shaping the neck. I basically would play it for a few minutes
and then mark the spots that felt weird to my thumb and then go sand
on them a bit. Once I got it to where I was happy, I started the finishing
process. On the next to guitars I decided to leave the neck unfinished
for a while for several reasons. First, I can now really take may time
and get the neck perfectly shaped the way I want it. Second, I've never
liked the feel of a glossy finish neck, so leaving it unfinished gives
me a few options. I can leave it unfinished and sand it to 1500 grit
smoothness, (see internet article- http://www.edromanguitars.com/tech/1500g.htm )
I could put an oil finish on it, or I could spray a thin coat of satin
lacquer on it. If I went with the
satin
lacquer
option,
I'd tint the lacquer to match the guitar.
Unfinished necks.
You can't tell too much from the
picture, but there was a bit of "bleed-thru" of the red dye
once I took the tape off the neck. This was easily cleaned up with a
bit of sanding. Also, when I peeled the tape off of the neck of the red
guitar, a small bit of the finish came off the neck joint with the tape.
This was easily fixed by doing so "spot-spraying" where the
finish had peeled off. The new lacquer melted into the old and you can't
tell anything
had happened. Next time I'll know to score the tape with razor blade
before peeling it off. Also, you can't tell from the picture, but the
were a few spots on the green body where I didn't adequately sand off
the excess glue and the dye didn't take to the body. I fixed this by
finding a permanent marker the same color as the body and just touching
it up between clear coats. That method worked great in that instance,
but I tried it again on the red guitar and it didn't work as well. There
was a bit of white haze in the creases of the knob indentations on the
red guitar, so I grabbed a red sharpie and tried the same thing. This
worked great until I sprayed the clear and it dried. The red sharpie
marks for some reason turned green. Between each coat the green tint
sanded off just fine so I'm not too worried about it, I'm sure it will
sand off in the final sanding. If not, it will either not be noticeable
once the knob is on, or it will be a minor touch-up job to sand an refinish
the hole. It actually looks worse in the picture.
I'm not really wild about the black
headstock on the purple guitar, so there's a good chance I'm going to
sand it down and glue a quilt maple veneer on it and dye it to match
the guitar. That's what I did with the green guitar. Before gluing down
the quilt maple veneer, I glued down an Ebony veneer to give it a bit
of an accent outline. Since the veneer/thin stock on the red guitar guitar
is thick enough, even if I spray the neck with a red tint, I'll still
have a nice thickness to do the "faux binding" effect around
the headstock.
Headstock painted, or with a veneer?
Part of my decision making process
on the purple headstock will be to see how it looks with the truss rod
cover. I made truss rod covers out of the top body wood and I'll dye
them to match the guitar. As with everyting else, I made them a bit oversized
so that they can be shaped down exactly how I want them.
With each of these guitars I experimented
a bit with the dying/finishing process. As I said earlier the purple
guitar started out as a sunburst. I already had a Telecaster that I had
finished in a dark purple, so I decided to go light with it just for
something different.
The first guitar I ever refinished.
My basic plan for all of these wood
finishes is to pick a color of dye, then I add some black to it. I test
it on a scrap piece of wood (always keep your scrap wood) to make sure
it's what I'm shooting for. After dying the guitar and letting it dry,
sand most of it off. The darker color will stay in the deeper grain of
the wood. The re-apply a lighter color of dye to make the dark spots
really jump out. With the green guitar, I dyed it dark green, sanded
it off, and then put amber dye on it.
Shazam!!! Not bad for an inexpensive
piece of wood.
With the red guitar I tried dying
it red in the center, and then gradually making it darker as I went outwards.
My plan was then to sand it off and then dye it amber with a bit of red
in the center and make that get more red towards the edges. It didn't
look the way I had hoped. I ended up dying and sanding that guitar all
day, but I'm really happy with the results. I've always thought it was
b.s. when someone tried to say, "the picture doesn't do it justice"....but
now I know what they mean. I probably took 50 pictures of the red guitar
and none of them really captured how great it looks. And to think, I
haven't wet-sanded or polished it yet!
The first layer of dye that all got sanded
off. The guitar in between clear coats. You can kinda tell in the 3rd picture
where it so bright red that the camera just can't quite handle it.
I'm still deciding what I'm going
to do about my body cavities. As you can see from the pictures, I dyed
the neck pickup cavity in the green guitar, but it looked like crap so
from then on I taped most of the cavities up. It not that big of a deal
right now. I do like showing off how deep the neck is set into the guitar.
All of my guitars from now on are going to have the pickups mounted directly
into the guitar body (for better tone) so I'll have to make them look
as nice as possible.
Lots of blue tape.
Because I used Ash on the body backs,
it had to be grain-filled. I used oil-based grain filler and I can say
that I'm not at all fond of it. From now on I'm going to use Epoxy, or
I'm going to stick with Alder because it does not need grain filling.
My first problem with grain filler is that it's a mess. It goes on like
oatmeal. It's not supposed to color the wood but it does, in this case,
leaving white-ish stripes. Luckily with the green guitar the effect turned
out to my liking. With the red
guitar
I added ebony dye to the grain filler and it also ended up being a nice
effect. The back of the green guitar had some worm holes in it which
just got filled with the grain filler. It gives it character.
This is #4, put on hold while I'm in England.
The top is a 3/4 inch piece of Birdseye Maple. I brought the top with me
to England to carve/sand it to shape. I tried a different carving idea
on this and it
didn't work.
It
didn't
ruin
it,
but
it's going
to add hours and hours to the sanding process. Live and learn. I'm going
to hollow this guitar out as much as possible and cut two F-Holes in it.
As you can see, I had some top wood left over so I made matching knobs.
I think I'm going to continue the striped laminate theme on this guitar
and make wooden pickup rings also out of laminates, but of a different
type. I might make this more of a "Jazz" guitar. The neck for
this guitar is pictured at the top of the page, it's 3 inches longer than
my other necks so that the bridge anchors into the neck wood. Every little
bit helps.
I see alot of sanding in my future.....
I'll be adding a bit more to this
soon, stay tuned......
Email me at: tc@thomascherry.com
